Johannes Trithemius

Johannes Trithemius (1 February 1462-13 December 1516) was a German Benedictine abbot and occultist during the Renaissance.

Biography
Johannes Trithemius was born in Trittenheim, Electorate of Trier, Holy Roman Empire in 1462. He learned Greek, Latin, and Hebrew as a child, and he studied at the University of Heidelberg. In 1483, he became abbot of the Benedictine abbey of Sponheim, and he exponentially increased the number of books in the abbey library. He was also a noted historian and occultist, writing Steganographia in 1499. During the 1490s, Trithemius was sent to Rome as the German ambassador to the Papal States, and he was sent in 1498 to communicate his country's concerns about a French-Papal alliance. In exchange for Germany's non-intervention in the Italian Wars, Pope Alexander VI sent Cardinal Raffaele Riario to inform that the Papal States would support the Empire's policies against England. Trithemius died in 1516.